Grooving bearings

[AshimotoK0]

Saw a thread on Pete's restoration of F2 but don't want to hi-jack his thread.
Does anyone know the engineering procedure for grooving bearings like the Honda gearbox ones? I appreciate that these are C3 high speed bearings and you can get a standardd grooved type but the groove is too wide. Another option I have seen described on the SOHC site is to make a special modified half ring retainer which is stepped.

i have access to full engineering facilities part from centreless grinding.

I do appreciate you can get the special bearings from Honda  so that's another (expensive) option. Well I am a Yorkshireman after all!!!!!

BTW just read the MCM 'Engine Analysis' from '74 which says not a sign of roller bearings in the SOHC 750 engine. They must have forgotten about the two caged needle roller bearings in the primary drive assembly?

Cheers!!!

AshD

Cheers

Ash

[Bryanj]

Ash the only way i can think of grooving a bearing would be with an exact width cuttoff wheel and i would be paranoid about excess heat and the carbide dust.

Unless you are contemplating 1,000's of rebuilds my personal opinion is buy the Honda ones, yes they are dearer than bearing shop but not by a oooh dear amount.

On an asside back in the 70's we priced up front wheel bearings and if we bought 50+ SKF/FAG bearings they would come down to the same price as Honda's RETAIL and we got 30% disc from Honda!!!

[the-chauffeur]

I've just had Brian cut a couple of grooves in some bearings for me.  IIRC, the bearings I wanted were no longer available from Honda, so I didn't really have much choice.

Must confess, I don't know much about the procedure beyond what he told me, but I gather that to do the job properly you need a fairly specialised cutting tool.  Fortunately for me, he's got one lying around in his workshop, so I got some SKF bearings I had with the blank sides machined to match those that came out of the bottom end of the 750.

Don't s'pose that helps much, but I'm sure Brian could give you some pointers if you don't have any luck anywhere else . . .

[AshimotoK0]

Should have checked David Silvers 1st !!! - they are quite cheap from there - when I looked 2 years ago, somwhere else, they were about 25 quid each.

Best regards,

Ash

[UKROBK7]

I had to have a bearing modified some time ago for a different project and I believe that the person who did it wax dipped the bearing to seal the race, lined it up in a 4 jaw and then used a slitting wheel (grinding type) set in a high speed toolpost grinder to cut the groove.  He used the same setup to radius one edge of the inner race (needed for that project). I think the wax was the stuff you use to protect tools.  The wax was then peeled away and the bearing given a good wash out and regreased.  Thank goodness it only cost a packet of "fags" - ah those were the days!

Rob